


The Soul Has Its Hours

by Byacolate, D_sel



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Baihu Genji, Body Worship, M/M, NSFW Art, Pining, Sanzang Zenyatta, Trans Character, Trans Zenyatta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 01:38:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13916604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_sel/pseuds/D_sel
Summary: Sanzang's thighs are a holy place.





	The Soul Has Its Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Charming artwork by the incredible d-sel who was an absolute pleasure to work with!

Perhaps they call him Baihu for the way he holds himself in battle. That, at least, is what he assumes. He was raised to have poise in war and at rest  - his rebellious youth, once upon a time, tamped down by decorum until he fell in line with his brother.

 

Or perhaps they call him Baihu for the color of his armor, and whatever they feel it represents. Though the thought is uncharitable, in all likelihood, they are probably mistaken in this regard. It is no fault of theirs; who could know that his family has always dressed him in white. Who could know that it has been used to monitor his actions, a testament of how pristine he could keep himself, and thus the Shimada name. Who could know which habits take longest to kill.

 

There are any number of reasons that the people call him Baihu - the White Tiger. Statuesque and untouchable, as he was always groomed to be. Valiant and enigmatic. Proud and upright.

 

He is neither proud nor upright in this moment. He is not statuesque, and far from untouchable. In fact, he is nothing short of humbled by the man before him. One look, one word, and he had taken a knee before Sanzang.

 

Any passersby unaware of their history would surely have a tale to tell now of the mighty Baihu laid low before a wandering monk. But he does not care a wit about the wandering eyes of passersby.

 

It had been with great joy and surprise that he greeted his old friend here in the Red Phoenix’s halls. Sanzang had come seeking and baring great knowledge of the healing arts, however -

 

“The Red Phoenix is away,” he'd said, kneeling before Sanzang. “I hope I may suffice as company in her stead.”

 

Sanzang's soft laughter graces his ears while his touch lights upon Baihu’s shoulder.

 

“Rise, dear friend. Fortune has favored me on this day; I have longed for your company for an age.”

 

Baihu has always been taken by Sanzang's words. His wisdom is invaluable, and the cadence of his voice draws Baihu to a peaceful place within.

 

In the Red Phoenix's absence, he has lit long candles and incense to create for himself the illusion of home. Yet nothing could touch the _home_ he feels with Sanzang's hand upon him. Taken by reverence and impulse alike, here in the Red Phoenix’s empty hall, Baihu lowers to his other knee. He reaches out to cup the back of Sanzang's ankle.

 

“You must be weary from your journey,” he intones, sliding his hand up a dark and shapely calf.

 

“The road is not long when it leads me to you.”

 

Baihu bows his head.

 

“I humbly request the honor of easing your aches, master monk.”

 

The hand on his shoulder glides up the side of his neck to the helmet that hides Baihu's face. “Then humbly, I accept.”

 

  
Art by [d-sel](http://d-sel.tumblr.com/)

 

The guest wing is expansive, speaking to the Red Phoenix's hospitality and penchant for opulence. In his younger years, when Baihu was simply a son of Shimada, it would have been to his liking. But time, if it is kind, changes all manner of men, and the man Baihu is now requires far less for comfort.

 

Even the smallest room in the palace is immense, with great gilded windows set into walls four times Baihu’s height, and a bed that could comfortably fit a militia, and room enough for a bathing pool dug deep in the floor. It is here that Baihu guides Sanzang to rest his weary legs.  

 

“I will fetch you food and something to drink,” he says, a sudden spring in his step. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

 

He moves with haste, eager to please and illogically afraid that in the time it takes to fetch a platter from the kitchen, Sanzang might somehow be spirited away. When he finally returns, arms laden with the steamed bread and fresh fruit his old master is so fond of, Baihu nearly drops the jug of coconut milk.

 

Sanzang greets him from the steaming pool, lifting a hand above the surface in greeting. “You have returned.”

 

“Yes.” Baihu swiftly kicks the door closed. With great care, he sets the platter and the jug upon the corner table.

 

Slow breath in through the nose. Out through the mouth. When he turns back, Sanzang is still nude in his bedroom.

 

“I am…. gratified to see that you feel so at ease here.”

 

“I am always at ease in your company,” Sanzang hums and Baihu smiles behind his helmet.

 

“You are simply _always_ at ease.”

 

The dark skin of Sanzang's bare shoulders is nothing new to Baihu. They have known each other for many years, long before Baihu and Sanzang came to be. Long ago, upon a mountain, in a holy place, Baihu saw more of him than head and shoulders above the water. They had other names, once. Old names. And Sanzang had not always worn robes. Once, he was a wise and pious brother among brothers, and even on the mountaintop he preferred little but a pair of trousers, sandals, and the mountain breeze.

 

Once, when Baihu was Genji, he loved him carefully. Quietly. He admired his soul and his soft brown skin and the sweetness of his voice.

 

He loved him once, when they were guru and pupil. Cloistered monk and wayward soul. Of course he loves him still.

 

It is not Sanzang's naked shoulders that startle his heart like a rabbit’s, but his naked face.

 

The mask he wears, like Baihu's helmet, hides much from the world. It has been a very long time since he has shed the plate, and even longer since he has seen Sanzang's face. The mask is beautiful, but what lies beneath…

 

In quiet reverence of the perfection before him, Baihu ducks his head to pull the tasseled helmet from his armor. He can feel the fullness of Sanzang's gaze upon him without looking, but he looks anyway. His hair must be flattened, his face flushed, but Sanzang has seen him at his worst. And Sanzang - Tekhartha Zenyatta - looks upon him with the intensity of a newborn star.

 

“Will you not join me?” Sanzang asks, drifting across the pool toward Baihu.

 

What can he do but indulge them both?

 

  
Art by [d-sel](http://d-sel.tumblr.com/)

 

Baihu has never used the perfumed oils that line the wall of the pool, preferring for himself his own traveling soaps scented pine to remind him of home. But he had promised Sanzang a reprieve from the hard road, and so he takes a vial of frangipani oil from the shelf.

 

Before he returns to the pool, his hand hovers a moment over his own bar of soap. It is not in a warrior’s nature to hesitate, and so he snatches it up. Is this not, after all, a night for indulging in selfish desires?

 

With oil in one hand and soap in the other, Baihu looks back at the pool. One arm overlapping the other and his chin rested atop, Sanzang smiles serenely from the edge.

 

Right. Right. He… has stalled long enough.

 

Sanzang's smile coaxes him closer. “You may be overdressed for the bath. Or… perhaps I am unaware of another one of your unique customs?”

 

Again, Baihu looks down upon himself before he crouches to set the luxuries at the lip of the pool.

 

“Yes… I did not want to presume that you wished for more than my company.”

 

“Did you not?” Sanzang's lifts the soap - Baihu's soap - and gives it a little sniff. The gaze he levels at Baihu makes his stomach quiver. “Then I am obliged to enlighten you. It would please me greatly to enjoy your company here in the water. Disrobe to your comfort, if it so pleases you.”

 

Baihu loses his armor in moments.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

He knows precisely how monstrous his form is, how despicable he is to look upon. He hides his scars, his disfigurements and wretchedness from even the gods and gloaming.

 

Yet when Sanzang sees him bare, it is with stars in his eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Though he makes thorough use of Baihu's soap, Sanzang does not touch the frangipani oil. So it falls to Baihu to shepherd him to the edge of the pool where he requests that Sanzang find his perch. Indulgent, Sanzang does as bidden, and Baihu only just manages to turn his eyes away to allow Sanzang his due modesty as he lifts himself out of the steaming waters.

 

“What have you in store for me, dear one?”

 

With neither need or want to hide his true intentions, Baihu cups Sanzang's muscled calf. Though his mind and soul may be supple from his frequent meditations, his muscles are strung tighter than piano wire. Sanzang has long preferred days on the road to those at rest, and he taxes his body for it. Baihu slides his palm down the sturdy muscle to his shapely ankle to the ball of his foot. Though scrubbed down several minutes ago over a discussion on the nature of butterflies, Sanzang's feet and the earth have become one. His soles are so calloused that it would be a wonder if Sanzang could feel Baihu's fingers upon his feet at all.

 

Even so, Baihu holds one in his hand, uncapping the vial of oil with another.

 

“Oh!” Sanzang exclaims when Baihu digs his thumbs in upward arches into the balls of his foot. His toes twitch and flex, and the rest of him goes taut. Baihu regards him with concern until he sees the corners of Sanzang's eyes crinkle.

 

Another dig makes him squirm, and a laugh is bullied from him on the third. Sanzang's foot comes free of Baihu's hands to push against his chest.

 

“Master?” Baihu inquires, perfectly innocent.  

 

“Though the road was long, there is no need to anoint my feet.”

 

“You do not enjoy the Christlike parallels?” Baihu asks, earning himself another playful shove. “I meant only the highest respect. I had no intention of exploiting your ticklish -”

 

“If it pleases you to continue, then may I suggest you aim _higher.”_

 

Baihu hooks Sanzang's ankle over his shoulder in acquiescence. He puts more aromatic oil over his fingers and massages the meat of Sanzang's calf, which -

 

“G- !” Sanzang’s heel digs into his shoulder as he fights a full bodied spasm.

 

“Still ticklish, Master?”

 

The heel at his shoulder pulls him in closer. “... Higher.”

 

Baihu's wet chest comes flush with Sanzang's lower thighs. The summer song of a thousand cicadas drowns out his quaking heart as his hands, slick and sweetly scented, climb higher.

 

Though his instincts are second to none, he can barely keep himself from flinching when Sanzang reaches for him. His fingers slip over the scarred flesh of Baihu’s jaw - his caress is scented pine.

 

Sanzang’s thighs are a holy place, dark and thick with muscle. He is smooth to the touch, and he drips with with water and frangipani oil as Baihu’s torso comes flush with the marble of the side of the pool. He dared not look before, but now he can hardly help himself. Still, it feels...

 

“Do you need a moment?” Sanzang asks. His other leg hangs in the water, and he lazily draws it up to hug Baihu’s side. “I implore you to take your time, as one must with these things.”

 

Baihu's heart gives powerful tremors as he half ignores Sanzang's bait. The thighs spread about his chest draw his attention instead. Baihu coats the oil over his brown thighs, his body throbbing with every flex of the muscle beneath.

 

And between them…

 

_Thank you for this bountiful meal._

 

The thought drifts across his mind unbidden, but once it comes, he feels a flush creep down his chest. Sanzang's legs tighten around him, and Baihu - Baihu was finely crafted from birth to take direction.

 

Trembling apart from barely restrained want, Baihu presses his face to the crook of Sanzang’s neck. Though the frangipani oil is pungent, here he smells of pine and clean sweat. He smells like Baihu.

 

He prays for strength, and somewhere between Sanzang's sweet breath upon his ear and the fingers at his nape, he finds it. But the moment he opens his mouth, Sanzang speaks instead.

 

“I must confess to you, dear one: I have so longed for this.”

 

Baihu grips the slick skin about Sanzang's slender waist. With a shake of his head, he answers: “Not so long as I.”

 

“No?” Sanzang - cradles Baihu's head. “What makes you say so?”

 

Baihu thinks back on his time with Sanzang, the both of them younger, and the second son of Shimada so lost. He had been dutiful and he had been faithful, and he had given so deeply of himself to his family that _Genji_ had ceased to exist. He had become so lost that he could no longer see himself.

 

And yet a young monk, cloistered high atop a mountain, had seen something in him long forgotten.

 

 _“Pain,”_  he had said, unflinching in the face of Genji's scars and his white hair and the honey-tongued half truths he had come a-peddling, _“is a mountain weighed upon your soul.”_

 

Young Lord Shimada had come to the Shambali to broker a front of goodwill as they rose to international fame, and he had stayed because a keen young man had told him that even mountains can be weathered.

 

“I have longed for you from the moment I found myself.”

 

He buries the confession into the dip of Sanzang’s throat. The fingers threaded through the white hair at the nape of his neck go tight, and Baihu sinks to his knees. The hard stone ledge in the pool that acts as a bench offers little traction, so it is easy enough to spread his own legs at the knee, lowering himself as he smears his kisses down the front of Sanzang’s body.

 

As he goes, Sanzang’s heel slides down from his shoulders to his spine, and all of him tightens when Baihu hooks his arms below Sanzang’s frame and hoists him up to breathe over the core of him. It forces Sanzang to let go of Baihu's hair to steady himself against the floor, but the result is vastly worth it. He suspends Sanzang’s pelvis there - sturdy muscle, but so light in Baihu's arms. It ignites something hungry in him to hold Sanzang like this; here he watches Sanzang watching him, propped up on his elbows as they gaze at one another down the line of Sanzang's body. He is entirely at Baihu's mercy.

 

His sharp breath when Baihu puts his mouth to him breaks through the cacophonous cicadas like a blade. “Gen-"

 

Baihu shifts his shoulders under Sanzang's legs, and Sanzang obligingly tightens their grip as Baihu proceeds in this divine duty. The scent of him - of frangipani and Sanzang, Zenyatta, master, dearest friend, deepest love - drowns Baihu in heady waves. He is silken here between his thighs, hot and soft, and at the apex of him he tastes only of clean flesh.

 

But when Baihu’s wandering tongue slips deeper, holding Sanzang’s pelvis steady off the ground even as he squirms, here he tastes of something darkly rich. Tart, like the first fruit of spring. Baihu mouths a kiss to the jewel of his sex, and then tastes him again.

 

  
Art by [d-sel](http://d-sel.tumblr.com/)

 

His heart is in his throat and Sanzang is in his mouth, his arms, and all around him. Sanzang’s thighs around his ears squeeze tight, and his hips hitch when Baihu flicks his tongue against him. His heels dig into Baihu’s back, and it spurs him on like any proper steed.

 

Baihu feasts upon Sanzang like a man half starved. The light of his heart never once cries out, but carries on instead with a litany of sweet little sighs. Worthy of publication. Worthy of song. Battle is the only art that Baihu knows, but perhaps in another life Sanzang would be his muse.

 

“Genji,” he sighs as though in prayer. His true name ignites a fire in Baihu’s gut, and when he hears it he presses himself absentmindedly against the smooth tile of the pool wall. Sanzang’s breath hitches a high, soft hiccup. “Genji, I -”

 

His noise of encouragement draws another gasp from Sanzang, and then -

 

And then.

 

“ _We learn much from our fears and our desires,”_ Sanzang had told him once, not so long before they'd parted. The spring moon had filled the sky, and the air was full of song from down in the village. _“How easy it is to lose oneself in either or in both. But it is a beautiful night, not one for talk of fears. What is it that you most desire, Genji?”_

 

There are infinite ways to conceal a truth. Any lie will do. So Genji had told him he would go on searching for something so grand when indeed the truth was in full bloom in his heart. Its petals trembled with unspoken longing: _An eternity by your side._

 

That was his greatest desire. Perhaps it still is. But the feeling of Sanzang’s entire body shuddering in his arms, under his mouth, around his head as Baihu brings him to the peak of his pleasure - it is a decent second.

 

Baihu holds him still, even as Sanzang’s thighs go slack around his ears and his elbows give up, lying flat across the floor. “Master?” Baihu murmurs, slowly lowering the lower half of Sanzang’s body to the floor. His legs hang lazily in the pool, dead weight as Sanzang offers him a serene smile.

 

“Well done, Genji.”

 

Baihu startles himself with a dry laugh. It has been a long time since he last felt so light. To be praised in the same way Sanzang had often praised him for his form practicing katas… “Thank you.”

 

“Oh,” Sanzang murmurs, lifting his arms around Baihu’s wet shoulders when he pulls himself up out of the bath to stretch over Sanzang, “my tongue has often slipped this evening. Do you not prefer to be called _Baihu_ now?”

 

 _Beloved_ , Genji thinks, gazing down at the shadows across Sanzang’s face. _You can call me anything under the sun as long as I am yours._ “I am happy to hear you call me at all.”

 

As he helps Sanzang up with fragrant hands and drapes a towel around his shoulders, Baihu gives pause. “And you, Master? Do you prefer Sanzang?”

 

“To you, who knows me so truly?” Sanzang takes his hand and leads him to bed. One leg folds as he seats himself upon the low futon, gazing up at Baihu through dark lashes. His hands glide up Baihu’s thighs to his hips, pulling him forward. “Neither Sanzang or Master suit me now. Won’t you call me by my name?”

 

“Anything you ask of me,” Baihu swallows, hardly daring to touch that perfect face. He means it. He has always meant it.

 

“Will you say it?” he asks, leaning forward to press a kiss to the scarred jut of Baihu’s hip. His whole body is ablaze with want.

 

“Zenyatta,” he says, and chokes when soft lips mouth at the base of his cock.

 

Baihu does not last long. How could he? He is little more than a quaking mass of want, desire coiled so tightly for so long that now, fulfilled, he shakes apart. An autumn leaf in a hurricane. The last cherry blossom of spring.

 

And when Zenyatta is through with him, he gathers Baihu up, tucked away and fitted neatly under the sheets as though they have been lovers for years. Baihu leans into the hand that combs through his hair, dark digits sifting over a field of white.

 

“I have never been so warmly received from the road,” says Zenyatta. Baihu… ah, Genji. Genji, who cups one side of his neck to bury a kiss in the other, feels the warm weight of quiet laughter ease the burden of longing in his chest.

 

“Then perhaps I should be at the end of every journey.”

 

Zenyatta’s fingers brush against his temple. “Perhaps,” he agrees. Thoughtful. “Or perhaps…”

 

_An eternity by your side._

 

“Let us speak of it after you rest,” Genji croaks, and yet despite his purest intentions drags Zenyatta closer.

 

If the gods are kind, as they so rarely are, they will allow him to have this moment and a thousand more. It is not often that Genji, the White Tiger and the Second Son, feels so optimistic.

 

Dawn will come soon enough, and the future lies just beyond his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Byacolate is writing a gay comic about a wandering bard! [Check it out from the beginning HERE!](https://bardbouquet.tumblr.com/post/179195348759/a-dwarven-heirloom-a-blade-in-the-dark-and-a)
> 
>  
> 
>  _The world has many voices, and the soul has its hours and moments for everything._  
>  Hermann Hesse, from The Complete Fairy Tales; “A Dream Sequence,”  
>  
> 
> D_sel's Tumblr: [d-sel](http://d-sel.tumblr.com/).  
> Byacolate's Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> Battle.net ID: byacolate#1589
> 
> Inquire about fic reque$t$ [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> 


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